User blog:Starscream1998/My take on the story of Inside.
Without a doubt this is one of the most well-paced, deep and mysterious stories that has yet to come out of the Gaming Community and as such I think that Playdead, who alongside their previous game limbo that was also marvelous, deserve my full effort in fleshing out my story interpretation of Inside. We play a young, mute and stylistically faceless boy who starts the game presumably escaping from one of those capsule like containers and follows a lorry full of people being escorted away by a militia of some description. After escaping capture or death at the hands of these armed men and their mutts you catch up to the Lorry that has departed its cargo who are now lined up for something. We discover to our dismay that whatever was done to these people have left them in a zombie-like state of some sort. You also discover that a large company is behind this and due to other members/citizens of the public being present when you’re pretending to march alongside the others reveals that this is not an illegal human trafficking….IT’S A SOCIETY FUNDED EXPERIMENT with the onlookers probably being the people rich enough to avoid the ghastly machinations of the company! Remember early on in the game you encountered the slew of dead pigs and one of them still living with a nasty parasitic slug stuck to its rear? This to me coupled by the dystopian look of the world indicates the world is under fire from a natural disaster and the Earth has been reduced to a ball of disease and infection killing off humankind (note we see chicks, birds, some pigs and even fishes still alive) in a natural selection kind of way. On an interesting side note Pigs are used to test most human medication so that's also an explanation for the amount of dead pigs. So basically Earth is now a germ ball and mother nature has spoken the message of "the human race's time is up." Naturally the human race tries to selfishly defy the natural cycle and attempt to ensure the survival of their race which is now where I will explain the companies’ motives and the nature of their experiments. First off, the remote controlled bodies are NOT zombies as they are brought to the facility alive and well after being put in incubation and then genetically modified. Nowhere is this clearer than the two aquatic ladies we encounter. Yes I didn’t just stutter there are two of them who survived the experiments (could be wrong but I’m going with what I’ve got here) as we have the first one we briefly meet who is also the first of them in a small cut away jumpscare and the second on the umbilical cord who also goes on to drown us…or do they? The part where the second and most prominent one finally catches you she doesn’t drown you but as you both descend into the depths it seems she is gently holding you and sharing oxygen with the boy as many players fail to notice WE’RE NOT DYING!! Yes, yes I can hear you say “what about before that little cutscene?” Because story my friend and because there are secrets and lore the game developers want you to experience first (it also may teach you not to judge someone who may seem hostile) Anyways, back to the cutscene the Fish like lady brings the boy down to allow the yellow plug-in to modify his body in a way that will allow him to breathe underwater and withstand the crushing pressure of the water. THIS is one of most crucial parts of the game everyone seems to miss. The design of that thing is similar to the ‘mind control’ helmets you use except there is no mind control here or anywhere in this game. The remote bodies as I'll call them don’t just blindly follow you and will sometimes wait for you instead of doing something stupid like jumping off a ledge which leaves a lot to be desired for a mindless zombie. They are a hive mind of sorts now alongside their superhuman abilities such as some of these manual workers must have been down there working for MONTHS at the most. Remember when you dropped a cage of them only for them to get back up when they should be jelly? They are clearly not just zombies and as I’ve established they were normal humans too before this so the only explanation is genetic modification. Plus you stuble upon one of them who is well and truly dead so that puts a nail in the coffin for the whole Zombie or mind controlled/brain dead human theory for me. During the game you’ll stumble across an aquarium of sorts with many bizarre and downright alien creatures you’d expect to see in spore. There is also a powerful shockwave that threatens to splatter you which indicates the company is drilling down into the earth. The human race is turning to the seas for sanctuary and survival now, experimenting with their genetics to bring about the next evolution of human beings. This results in all the humanoid creature we see from the remote controlled grunts to the mermaid ladies to the deformed gang that help you to even the big Blob at the end. But they underestimated this boy who has not only survived their militia and braved feats people triple his age wouldn’t dream about but has been able to connect with the hive mind of the remote bodies and easily accepted the transfusion of DNA that allows him to breathe underwater. This boy’s actions speak louder than words ever could and he clearly has a strong will that will reward him in time. Now that you know what the story has taken us through it’s time to discuss endings. The good ending is not actually the secret one as many interpret oh no as that act of shutting down the ‘mind control’ is actually just a kill code for the genetically modified humans (which includes him at this point with his underwater breathing modifications). Now onto the good (and in my opinion best) ending where you are sucked into the container of the Blob. Notice the symbolism of heaven before it sucked you in and the loss of clothes signifying a shedding of old skin. After you remove the ghastly devices used to turn it into the main hub for the hive mind of remote bodies the Blob absorbs the boy where he becomes the Blob. The Blob was clearly meant to be the crème de la crème of the experimentations but they could not find a will strong enough which is why it ended up not as human 2.0 but as an amalgamation of humans with their consciousness long since gone leaving a non-sentient human meatball. So it was used as the central hub to connect the other experimental grunt workers through a hive mind network. Because of this though it's wavelength may of been great enough to reach our main character motivating him in his escape from his capsule and journey towards it. And so our strong-willed protagonist fuses with the Blob and in doing so he becomes the consciousness required. The boy now enacts a little retribution that I bet you the player found equally as gratifying and just. As you make your way out of the godforsaken Facility wrecking it and tearing it apart, probably freeing your new found brethren you met through the facility after getting in the sub in the process, you begin to molt as bits and pieces begin to fall off you until you finally lie on the warm land next to the calm sea slowly but surely undergoing the metamorphosis into a new being finally free of the selfishness of humanity. This to me is the underlying message that what appears to be gruesome and disturbingly unwanted was actually beautiful and poignant. Instead those who failed to see that searched for a literal ‘Genocide Route’ (playful reference to another game if anyone gets it) in the alternate ending whilst those who experienced the natural ending bore witness to the beginning of a new cycle of the world. Category:Blog posts